Based at the aquarium, the chosen candidate will assist in the overall, daily operations of the aquarium with the majority of time allocated to exhibit area servicing and management.
Responsibilities
These include; maintenance of aquatic life support, daily husbandry work for the animals, meeting nutritional requirements and feeding practises, health and hygiene, record keeping in accordance with Zoo License requirements, engagement with health and safety policies and general planning ahead to support the collection and other colleagues.
The role will be hands-on, assisting in the preparation of front of house and the exhibit area before visitor arrivals, ongoing daily maintenance and carrying out a closing down procedure.
Visitor engagement is a key part of the role. This includes general interaction with the customers, providing educational talks, feeding demonstrations, sharing points of interest and assisting with children’s quizzes.
The exhibit team here is established with many years of experience. They remain a wholly motivated, friendly and passionate team with their primary role being in promoting local wildlife, habitats and environmental awareness to visitors. They currently care for approximately 70 species of native freshwater and marine life in their recreated natural habitats. They look forward to welcoming the chosen candidate and will support their training in order to establish them as a key supportive and valued team member.
Employment details
Job Type: Part-time
Salary: From £11.44 per hour
Expected hours: 10 – 30 per week (subject to seasonal demands).
Benefits: Employee discount
Schedule: Monday to Friday & weekend availability
Start date; 04/03/24
Requirements; Essential and Preferred Skills
Education: Certificate of Higher Education (preferred)
Experience: Animal care including aquatics: 2 years (preferred)
Customer facing work &/or experience.
Highly motivated, energetic and reliable team player.
To have passion for wildlife and possess environmental and conservation credentials.
Excellent communication skills and confidence to communicate clearly with children, disabilities and other audiences.
Quick to learn and approve aquarium ethos and practises.
Practical and good at problem solving.
Dynamic; able to offer ideas. Develop teaching resources for formal and informal education.
Full clean driving license
Applicants
Submissions to include expression of interest, CV and referee/reference details. Send ASAP to e[email protected]
Those successful at application will be invited to interview.
Ilfracombe Aquarium
The Old Lifeboat House
The Pier
Ilfracombe
North Devon
EX34 9EQ01271 864533
Club’s members fished a competition over the festive period that concluded on January 7th. A range of species were caught from the North Devon shoreline, including bull huss, conger, grey mullet. ray and whiting. The winner of the competition was Wayne Thomas with a bull huss of 9lb 11oz.
Runner up was also Wayne with a thick lipped grey mullet of 3lb 11oz.
Bideford Angling Club – January Rover
Bideford Angling Clubs January Rover was won by Julien Stainer with a bull huss of 9lb 5oz. Nathan Clements was runner up and forth with huss of 8lb 10.5oz and 7lb 13.5oz. Paul Ackland was third with a dogfish of 2lb 7oz.
Appledore Shipbuilders January Rover
19 fished Appledore Shipbuilders January rover.
The Anglers reported targeting several different species with most catching their targets. Some lovely fish were caught today with 4 specimens recorded at the weigh in.
Claudio Pinto had a fine Small Eyed of 9lb 4ozs and Josh Atkinson had a Whiting of 1lb 11 3/4ozs both coming in at 115.87% to take joint first place. Andrew Atkinson was third with a Whiting of 1lb 10 3/4ozs.
Another chance to see this engaging and enlightening film that highlights some of the issues facing salmon. It will be followed by a short talk and discussion. I look forward to seeing a few of you there.
A Happy New Year and a big thank you to all you readers who’ve found and subscribed to my scribblings. Also, a heads-up: I’m going to embark on an erratic and very occasional mission to restore doggerel poetry to the heart of global cultural life. Be warned! The first missive will be arriving soon. Meanwhile – have a great year.
But not this time … here I’m wondering where all the young fish scribes are:
Why are so many of the best fishing books written by dead people? OK, a lot of old dross has been winnowed out by the passing of time and there are a few giants who are still with us. But it’s true: In fishing, the author pre-amble is all too often The Late, Great … (but please, not Izaak Walton).
Much of this can be blamed on the recent arrival of a burgeoning genre of how-to-fish clones. Templated school essays, corralling a rod, a reel, this knot, that fly, a perfect cast and, pause for breath, how to think like a fish.
Think like a fish? Why? Fish brains are an evolutionary also-ran from the times when amoebae were the smart kids on the block.
Not that it matters. This entire genre is redundant because the definitive how-to-fish book was first published in the 1940s and, some 5m sales later, has no need to evolve any further. Mr Crabtree Goes Fishingremains a work of genius and awesome artistic merit. The unattainable benchmark for all that followed. Nothing else comes close.
Better still, Crabtree and son Peter are digital misfits. AI can’t touch them and Disney will never animate them. Although Aardman might: Wallace and Gromit go Fly Fishing … I’d pay to see that. And, sadly, author Bernard Venables is no longer with us. Another one bit the dust. And nor is Peter, who really was Venables’ son. He was tragically killed while riding his moped.
None of which advances the cause of this essay – the pursuit of a reading list with some fresh new talent to showcase.
I am haunted by dead writers – Hunter S Thompson is pictured above. I’ve always thought his essay The Great Shark Hunt was a deliciously snarky take-down of Hemingway’s obscene fishing habits (also dead), but not everyone agrees – including, perhaps, Thompson – and, anyway, it’s yesterday’s story. Does anyone under 40 care?
So there’s the living Matt Labash (some 5 decades in) whose works include Fly Fishing with Darth Vadar in which he flashes a threesome of braggadacious ticks for an ambitious writer: Social endorsement in high society, intimate fluency with a fly rod and, as the pièce-de, consummated wordsmithery. In no particular order that’s sex and drugs and rock and roll (are very good indeed) and a link to another magnificent wordsmith, the late Ian Dury – who I don’t think was a fisherman. What a waste (link below). Meanwhile, Labash has an air of post-coital smuggery, which is both very cool and aspirational. If you’ve got it, inhale.
I’ve also skimmed some great essay writers from other genres in the hope I would find some unsung fishing talent and so great fish writing. It’s not too surprising that Tom Wolfe (dead) had nothing fishy to offer. I should have left well alone. But I was really shocked to draw a blank on PJ O’Rourke (dead). He lived deep in rural New Hampshire where he espoused Republican causes and shot things. So surely he was a fisherman? Maybe not – it seems he tried, hooked himself and quit. How can anyone who wrote an essay titled How To Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed And Not Spill Your Drink not end up in a river? And now it’s out and on my desk, Republican Party Reptile has hijacked my best attempts at getting back to work. Genius. Maybe his friend Matt Labash can set me right on this?
You’ve probably noticed that there’s an emerging theme here. That’s because dead heroes are a symptom of ageing. They are the people we look up to when younger – so of course they die first. Aspiration doesn’t work when thrown down a generation because there’s a strong whiff of paunchy creepiness about mid-life people running after the kids.
Maybe I’m getting old? At least I can still raise a glass to Mr Crabtree, who was old before I was born. Cheers. And yes, I’ll have another – thank you.
So I’ll behave myself and stay in my generational lane (must I?). I came across writer James R Babb (alive) later in life, which makes me wonder what stone I’d been hiding under. While he might be fresh to me (I live deep in the time-warp of the Somerset Levels), he’s probably well-known to you. He shows me things I think I’ve seen but never properly noticed – and thus gives me the gift of hindsight. He writes beautifully and knows absolutely everything useful. Really. He can hand-brake turn a sub-clause and restore a beaver pond in an afternoon. Then catch supper.
So why aren’t non-fisherfolk queuing up to buy Babb’s books? Maybe it’s bad marketing by his publishers? On his behalf I’d like to find someone to blame.
And still – where is the young talent?
Good writing is mostly a craft skill that is best picked up young and practised – not unlike a teen strumming a guitar. You hope your fingers will learn to make a noise somebody somewhere likes. Sure there are a few late-starter keyboard warriors who, from the get-go, sprinkle digital faerie dust – but very few hit the page running, let alone with a comfortable niche (branding, you might say). John Geirach didn’t come out of nowhere. So I think great writers emerge, forged in battle with the subs desk (remember them?) and beating their heads against house style guides, editors, publishers and, if they get through all that, the bloody readers who are so willfully off-message – what’s wrong with them?
It’s the process that delivered many of the late-greatsand continues to deliver through the likes of Tom Davis, David Profumo, Babb and more. None of whom could have been generated by AI, or not yet and I hope never.
And have you noticed? In fishing, nearly all men. This is not true if you look in the op-ed pages of our great newspapers and the topical essay-fuelled magazines where female bylines thrive. Mostly the places where writing is curated, published and paid for – a tougher gig than the interweb. Women succeed on the river bank and in print – but are mostly too canny to mix them. Maybe this last point is, well, the point?
There’s an awful lot of self-published male drivel online, with more made possible by the arrival of DIY vanity publishing. Don’t tell me – I’m not listening (guilty as charged).
I can at least claim a publishing first – you’ve now met Mr Crabtree and Hunter S Thompson in the same sentence. And, hold onto your drink, Mr Crabtree is still with us.
So I’ll raise a glass to wordsmiths one and all, and wish a happy New Year to you and yours. Thank you for reading.
Tight lines (that’s an editorial diktat) from a journeyman hack and bankside duffer.
Snowbee are delighted to present their new 2024 catalogue, with new products including the new GXS Prestige 9ft #9 4-piece Fly Rod, new 4th generation Deep Blue reels along with new saltwater fly lines. We also have 10 new killer fly selections for the coming season.
The new catalogue is available to view and download by clicking the image below :-
Many thanks to Richard Wilson for once again sharing his thought provoking prose with North Devon Angling News. The alarming picture painted by Richard is mirrored here with Atlantic Salmon suffering a similar catastrophic decline to those steelhead of North America.
If you have any doubts about whether or not 2023 was a good, bad or just indifferent year for fish, I have some news. It comes, unexpectedly, from the people who like to put a gloss on the world and reassure us all is well.
Sometimes reality intrudes on their seasonal good cheer:
“This year wasn’t so bad, if you make allowances for the conditions,” Salmon Fishing Travel Promo.
I’ll translate: 2023 was so bad they’re worried their clients might take up rock collecting or puddle-jumping instead of spending their money on fishing. It was the year of malevolent spirits known collectively as TheConditions. To save time listing them, I jammed my head into a free online word-cloud generator, shouted ’FISHINGCONDITIONS’, and it spat this back:
‘Lying bastards’ should be in a bigger neon typeface (it’s between excrement and death), but otherwise, it’ll do. You can add/subtract your own ideas.
This is deadly serious: At stake is an entire ecosystem. Salmon prop up everything from bears and forests to orcas at sea. Their loss would be an ecological and economic disaster with terrible consequences.
I know nobody who fished anywhere in 2023 who’s celebrating greatconditions. According to one globe-trotting contact, the year’s fishing was all, and he said it pithily, Shit. Which scans like an old-fashioned train rolling down the track … Pithily Shit, Pithily Shit, Pithily-Shit. Try it out loud. And it’s a great name for a fishery mismanagement award. Imagine: “And the winner of this year’s Pithily-Shit Prize is ….”. Suggestions? I have a hatful.
These Conditions come in two principal varieties; dire fishery management and climate-driven. Like many others, I’m playing catch-up with the speed of it all.
Fishing is big business in sea & river, with economic muscle and political clout. And that has consequences. And so does this: North America is a significant hold-out against science generally and climate science in particular – an astonishing 10-15% are sceptics whose scintillating mental arithmetic makes mainframe computers gasp with envy.
So, when environmental (science) data is unwelcome, route one is to attack – it’s bullshit, being a top technical rebuttal. And route two is to twist political arms.
We can follow the dollars and see this playing out just about everywhere. For example, in British Columbia – where it’s been making the news recently.
Canadian Salmon and Steelhead, a sea-run rainbow trout, swim in much the same pithily-shit word cloud as everywhere else. Although, according to the BC authorities, they don’t. Bear with me – this is relevant wherever fish migrate.
We have a lot of good data on BC’s Steelhead runs. The Skeena River test fishery, for example, shows 2023 was the 2nd weakest run in decades (10k fish), coming just 2 years after the worst (5.5k) on record. The yearly average over nearly 70 yrs is about 35k.
That’s the number arriving in the estuary, so before the lethal river gill nets and then the myriad anglers – including me – who catch (and I hope release) their share along the hundreds of miles of main river and principal tributaries.
So how many female fish in prime condition will make it to the redds in this shrunken-run year of desperately low flows and high water temperatures? Surely, not enough. And we also know that juveniles, the smolts, are surviving the return journey to sea in ever smaller numbers (everywhere). Warmer water makes for smaller smolts – and size is a matter of life or death.
This, you might think, is dreadful news for the fish. Not so, according to British Columbia’s fishery dons (the Dept of Fisheries and Oceans). It was business as usual.
“Trust me, I’m a fisheries officer …”
Awkwardly, for the dons, Canada’s Auditor General has just released yet another report revealing how they’re screwing things up, big time. It gets worse when you look at how and why.
It seems the dons, whose remit features conservation, happily grant legal protection to species of no commercial value while just about always blocking it for $ high-value species, like salmon. And why would they do that? I think you just guessed.
They make their decisions with the help of unverified data supplied by anonymous ‘collaborators’ who, according to the AG, have conflicted interests in, for example, the commercial fishery. Who’d-a thought it? And while the dons are legally obliged to report and root out such conflicts of interest, they regularly don’t (says the AG). Because maybe they’re mates, or siblings or neighbours? Or some such.
It reeks of cronyism and corruption.
As said, the Skeena is just one among many. The report covers all Canadian regions. And, worldwide, fishery managers are bigging up stocks, mismanaging and covering up threats like disease and climate change while piling on the nets and rods – and trousering the $s.
Unsurprisingly, more fishermen are staying away. Once-exclusive beats on famous rivers are becoming easier to access – and disappointing to fish.
So it should come as no surprise that a senior DFO official wrote this of the dire 2021 run: There’d be no protection for the fish because the Skeena data is “…a measurement problem and it’s not precise enough to warrant massive socioeconomic impacts and alienating those that care about Steelhead the most.” There were just 5.5k fish, a record-busting low, andhe’s suddenly spotted a measurement problem with near-70 yrs of continuous data? And who are these most caring victims of ‘massive socioeconomic impacts’. Whose money? Well, it sounds like those vested interests outed by the AG. So there’s the playbook: Undermine the facts, falsely claim the moral high ground and hug your collaborators tight. And screw the fish (and the Auditor General).
I nominate the writer for a Pithily-Shit Award (a turd on a styrofoam plinth, perhaps). I’ll have to make a lot.
The DFO Pithily-Shit Award
When a species gets into as much trouble as the Steelhead on the Canadian and US West Coast, the moral and scientific imperative is to prove fishing is sustainable. We shouldn’t keep hammering them to see if the population collapses. Here’s another DFO “measurement problem”:
The estimated spawning abundance of Thompson River steelhead. The last data point is the expected ‘23 run (ie spawning spring ‘24): about 230 fish. BC Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship
As a general observation, endemic corruption is very hard to shift.
So what to do to help the fish here, there and everywhere? If we are so minded, there’s a lot. We can start by putting people in charge who care about them. We can clean up our rivers, get rid of dams, restore headwaters, limit fishing pressure everywhere and treat them as a precious gift from Mother Nature and the foundation of an entire ecosystem. But will we?
And then there’s the really grim stuff: Events already underway that we’re powerless to influence. This is where I fear the Conditions may get impossibly tough.
For example: What was, at the time, the most powerful marine heatwave on record, “The Blob”, brought havoc to the North Pacific from 2014 to 2016. The impacts ranged from massive algal blooms to Baleen Whale die-offs.
It triggered a food chain collapse. Small bait fish are eaten by just about everything bigger than they are. The warmer water reduced their food supply (and the oxygen content of water) while increasing their metabolic rate, so they needed to eat more, but had access to less. Inevitably there were mass deaths and the survivors lost body weight and fat content.
This worked its way back up through the food chain. Everything had to consume more to keep pace with over-heating metabolic needs – but there was less to eat. Scientists estimate 1 million fish-eating sea birds, Common Murres, died of starvation and 100 million Pacific cod vanished from the waters off southern Alaska – and cod do not spawn in waters warmer than 9.6c (IMR, Norway). We’ll never know how many Salmon and Steelhead died.
This year has seen ocean temperature records aplenty (below) as the world hits its warmest for 125,000 years. There is more and worse to come.
We have it in our power to stop the rot but, oh my, there’s a lot to do. The flight of capital out of fossil fuels means that carbon emissions could start to fall in the next year or three. It’s a start, but we need to do the massively scaled-up equivalent of an emergency stop with a planet-sized supertanker.
Meanwhile, a handful of small-time idiots with mates and money in the game behave as though business as normal will deliver a happy ending for Salmon and Steelhead. They are the Pithily-Shits with the wilful negligence to fuck it up for everyone.
On a more cheerful note, good conservation practice is becoming a major project on some rivers. It’s a fearsomely complex puzzle …. but I want to go fishing in places where conservation drives management decisions and my presence (and money) make a net contribution for the better. Is that too much to ask? I can at least try – and I’ll start by not going anywhere beholden to the Pithily-Shitters.
And finally, here are some global sea surface temperatures to ponder (live link below). Is anyone dumb enough to call this Bullshit? Sadly, yes.
World Ocean Temperatures 1981 – 2023 (top). University of Maine click graph for a live & interactive link
To read more of Richard Wilsons fishrise click on the link below : –
Coarse fishing end of year newsletter
December 2023
Dear fellow anglers,
Where has 2023 gone? Another brilliant year of angling on our coarse fishing venues has flown by. There have certainly been some highlights this year and it has been fantastic to see the reports and photos sent in of people’s captures this year.
It was a great start to the year for pike fishing on College Lake, with the lake recently allowing limited pike fishing tickets through the winter season. All the anglers that took up the opportunity to pike fish the lake had a great time with multiple fish caught over the colder months. These tickets are available again this year, please ring the office for details on 01566 771930.
New format a success for Mainline Baits
Soon, spring was upon us and with the pike season coming to a close the other species started to wake up in in the reservoirs with multiple catch reports coming in from Argal and Upper Tamar in early March.
The end of March saw the return of the Mainline Baits Pairs competitions on Upper Tamar. There was a rule change this year on how the final result is taken, where a pair can register their three biggest fish and the final weight is taken from that. This led to a much more competitive and close competition which could be won at any time by anyone.
Over the year we offer three pairs competitions on Upper Tamar with £3,500 of prize money up for grabs. All anglers get a goody bag from the match sponsor Mainline Baits. We look forward to running these again in 2024 (dates to be announced at the start of the year).
Upper Tamar on top form for matches
Springtime also marked the start of the matches on Upper Tamar. Upper Tamar is such an amazing venue and once again it showed its form with some cracking weights of bream, perch and roach from the matches through the year, it’s no wonder it is regarded as one of the best venues in the country. It was great to see familiar faces this year and once again there was some top banter to go with it.
The match calendar for Upper Tamar is already full for 2024, we apologise for any disappointment. There are still dates available for Jennetts and a couple of other venues, please get in touch for details.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the match organisers and competitors for their support in 2023. We hope 2024 will bring another successful year of matches on our reservoirs and we look forward to seeing you in the new year.
Get Fishing Awards at Porth and Darracott
As summer started, plans were well under way to try to show a wider audience just how amazing our sport is. Through the month of August, we aimed to roll out the Angling Trust ‘Get Fishing Awards’ at Porth and Darracott. This was a gateway for newcomers to try fishing and have the confidence and knowledge to get out there and go fishing by gaining a Bronze, Silver and Gold award after three sessions.
A massive thank you to the volunteers who helped at the events, we aim to carry on these sort of events in 2024 and plans are in place to try and kick on from this to encourage more into the sport.
Carp removal project at Roadford Lake
September saw the start of the carp removal project at Roadford Lake. Due to fish spawning in the first week of May we had to put a hold on it until September. This gave the opportunity for people to fish the 700+ acre venuefor carp for the first time.
Due to agreements and legislation when Roadford was created, the lake can only be run as a brown trout fishery. Therefore, the aim of the project is to remove carp to improve the brown trout fishing and at the same time use the fish to improve the stocks in some of our reservoirs. Throughout September, over 200 carp were caught and moved to other venues to improve the stocks of the lakes.
Pike, Catch and stock: a busy end to the year!
As the year draws to an end it has seen the matches finish on the venues until next year, the pike season has started again, the day tickets have moved onto the Catch app and we have invested in some new stock for the lakes, with over £15,000 of carp being stocked (including this stunning mirror at Melbury, below).
A big thank you to all those that took part in the season ticket survey.
Notable catches and results on the lakes
There have been some notable catches and results on the lakes this year. Longham has been on fine form producing a bream of 20lb to Chris Harrison and a new lake record 48lb 4oz carp to Alan Thurlow.
Lee Kerry was crowned the Feeder Masters champion for the third time at Upper Tamar. The close competition was won with a winning weight of 65lb 10oz after two days, beating second place and last year’s champion Zak Williams by 2lb 6oz.
Lower Tamar has once again produced some fantastic bream (see photo below) with multiple double figure fish getting caught through the year. The lake has also been producing some cracking 30lb carp and some great tench to over 7lb.
Trenchford has had a great start to the winter with a 24lb pike making Julian Fraser’s day, it was his first ever pike! Porth and Argal have seen some stunning carp landed this year, Jennetts has been producing some lovely carp with a good number being over 20lb and the silver fish fishing has been fantastic on the venue with a 20lb plus bag of silvers not uncommon.
There are many other great catches on the lakes this year but we can’t list them all.
We are very fortunate in North Devon to have some excellent fishing tackle shops providing local anglers with a wide range of tackle and bait. Tackle shops are at the heart of the local angling community providing a meeting place where anglers can pick up the tools of the trade before spending their hard earned cash. Tackle shops are also a vital social centre where anglers can mingle to plan trips to the water’s edge. I value the support given to North Devon Angling News by our local tackle shops. Over the last few days before Christmas why not pop into your local tackle shop and maybe buy a present or two and stock up with tackle for the Christmas holidays and next year’s fishing trips.
